I want to be notified when the PING service goes down initially, again after 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc. I have created separate email notifications with diferrent "repeat interval" times but that just sends out all 3 emails out at once. I don't want to use "repeat count" because it sends the exact same email and not in the intervals I want. I've looked through many forum threads but can't find any related to what I want to do. Does anyone know if The Dude can be configured to do this?

I know you can put [TimeAndDate]. I think you might have missed the "Delay". Set the 2nd email notification with a delay of 2min and the 3rd email with a delay of 5min. I think the trouble here is there might be a bug. The 2nd and 3rd email may still be sent even if the ping is resolved. You can let us know

Thanks,
Lebowski

You're correct Lebowski. I set a 5 minute "delay" and "repeat interval" and pulled the plug until it went red and even though the PING resolved well before 5 minutes I still received the email notification 5 minutes later. So are you in agreement that there should be a way to do it?

It is a bug and I don't know what you can do at this point. Your only work around is to repeat using one probe with a "time and date" (maybe in the subject) so it is easy to read.

I wish they would inquire just before they go work on the dude so we could submit the bugs...

GL,
Lebowski

I'd like to share how we do what you're attempting. I create two Notifications (On Call: Ups and On Call: Downs).

On Call: Downs
----------------
Delay: 00:00:00
Repeat Interval: 00:15:00
Repeat Count: 20
On Status: unstable->down and up->down


On Call: Ups
----------------
Delay: 00:00:00
Repeat Interval: 00:00:00
Repeat Count: 0
On Status: down->up

This will page our On Call tech when the device initially goes down. Then 15 minutes later if it is still down it will page again. This will continue to happen 20 times, the equivalent of 5 hours. If the device were to come up within that time frame the down pages would cease and the on call tech would get one page stating the device has come up.

We also have a On Call: Emergency notification.

I create a probe called ping2.
Name: ping2
Type: ICMP
Agent: default
Packet Size: 32
TTL: 64
Retry Count: 3
Retry Interval: 1000

Then create a notification.

Name: On Call: Emergency
Delay: 00:00:00
Repeat Interval: 00:00:00
Repeat Count: 0
On Status: down->up and unstable->down and up->down

Then add the ping2 service to the device you'd like to have an emergency page if the on call tech has not resolved it within an hour.

Device>Services>Plus Sign
Add Probe: ping2
Probe Interval: default
Probe Timeout: default
Probe Down Count: 100
Notifications Tab>Use Notifications: On Call: Emergency

This will notify myself, the Network Administrator, if a device has remained down for over an hour and hasn't been ACKed. The hour comes from the Probe Interval, default is 30 seconds, the Probe Timeout, default is 10 seconds. It will ping the device every 30 seconds and then if it's down will wait 10 seconds to confirm there is no reply then repeat. 40s*100times = 400s. 400s/60s=66.66 minutes. One nice thing about this, is if something's is down for less than an hour the original ping service on that device will be down, but the ping2 service will be unstable. This will make the device orange. After the ping2 service goes down at the 66 minute mark the device will go red. This allows everyone to know if I have been paged yet or not. If it's red, I am aware of the issue. If it's orange I haven't been notified yet.

Let me know if this helps or if anyone knows of a more efficient way to do this.

A very ingeneous way of creating an escalation method when none exists natively. I had been thinking about ways to do this, as I can imagine that it is something the bosses will want at some stage. I shall spend no more energy on thinking about this issue... thanks for sharing that.

Here is an example of solving this problem: http://tandem.ck.ua/dude-eng.php

Here is an example of solving this problem: http://tandem.ck.ua/dude-eng.php

I'm not sure this page is showing a resolution for correct delaying and notification, and hiding downs if a subsequent up has come through.